St. Andrew's Ball

We were invited to the St. Andrew's ball on Thursday night by our friends Rob and Samantha. It was very interesting - and fun! We were able to do some of the dances, although not very well! The best part was getting to dress up in our formal attire!

Goodbye, Pavlasfamily.com

It's done...I shut down the pavlasfamily.com website. I think the blogspot website is much better. Hopefully, you do as well! One thing about it, it is much easier to keep up to date. I didn't know if I would be able to do it, but so far, so good.

I love it!

I wish my car had a spare tire thing on the back! If it did, I would definately want this for the cover. "Shwei, Shwei" basically means "chill out" in Arabic. When people are getting upset or loud, you will see people saying, "shwei, shwei" and rubbing their fingers and thumb together. I love the fact that this is a spare tire cover, since most of the drivers around here really do need to shwei, shwei!

The Golden Rule - Qatar style

We have all heard of the 3 wise monkeys - see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil. They are also known as the Japanese Golden Rule. We were in the souqs the other day and saw these monkeys - and noticed there is a fourth one in Qatar - do no evil (notice where his hands are)! I just couldn't pass it up!

Finally - some cooler weather!

Well, we finally got some cooler weather! The high today was only 76F! On Saturday the high was still in the mid-90s, so a 20 degree drop is great to me! I was actually a little chilly today - I guess that means I have "climatized". Anyway, Adam and I went for a walk (with him on his trike) and ended up at Samantha's. Her kids were out back on the trampoline - also enjoying the cooler weather. Adam joined them and Sam and I hung out and enjoyed the cool breeze!

Playing at the park

Nini leaves for Liberty tonight, so this afternoon we stayed around the house and took Adam to the park in our compound. He has entered the "I can do it myself" stage, and no longer asks for help when climbing around on the playground. The weather was perfect - around 25 C (77 F) with a cool breeze. I heard we were getting cooler weather soon - maybe this is the start of our "winter"!

Adam's Birthday Party

Friday was Adam's 3rd birthday party. We held it at one of the clubhouses in our compound. We borrowed a small bouncy house from my friend Samantha - which the kids all loved. We played a few games - pass the parcel, pin the mask on Spidey, and the pinata, of course. We invited about 11 kids, and 9 were able to make it. They all had a good time and we managed to get through it all without too many tears! We had another Spiderman cake made at Megamart, which turned out pretty good - but not as good as our cake that we made last weekend! It was a great party - but I for one am glad it's over! To see the rest of the pictures, click here.

Trip to the Souqs

We took Nini down to the Souq Waqif (Old Souq) and the Jewelry Souqs on Thursday. The Old Souq has changed so much since the last time we were down there (before summer). They have paved all the dirt areas and added little cafes and sitting areas. She really like the jewelry souqs and even found herself some little trinkets to take home!

Crazy stuff

I read posts on QatarLiving.com on a daily basis. There is usually very useful stuff on there. Today was no different. I found these two posts very interesting and stopped to realized how different things really are over here.

The first post, about the new traffic laws had these two statements that stood out to me:

Expatriates caught drunk while driving are to be deported. This is the only traffic violation in which an expatriate caught is to be deported. - I wish they would do this at home!

The fine for a motorist driving an automatic car and caught resting his legs on the dash board or the side seat is QR10,000 and a jail term of a month to three years. - Is this really a problem????

The second post, was about physical addresses. Now, everyone in the USA has a physical address, even if their mail comes to a P.O. Box. Well, here, there aren't even street names, much less house numbers. We live in a compound, and have a house number for that compound, but to try and tell people where the compound is - now that is another story.

"All residents should keep a note with their full address stuck near the telephone in case they need to call 999. People still don’t know their addresses and this is a factor that holds us back in reaching our callers faster," said Penny Price of Hamad's Emergency Medical Services. "We need the caller to tell us the street name, street number, house number, and zone so that we could detect the location in our computer system instantly and respond," she explained.

-I guess I could call up our favorite Indian restaurant and place an order, then call the ambulance and have them follow the Indian delivery guy here - because he sure knows where we live!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Adam!

Today is Adam's 3rd birthday. We had a small celebration at the house with cake and a few presents. We had the Spiderman cake that we made the night before. Adam loved it! He sang "Happy Birthday" to himself all through dinner. We told him all day that today was his birthday, and that he was now 3 years old. I think by dinner time he got it. We gave him a floor piano that you walk on to play. Adam loves it, but Buster is scared of it (of course!). His actual Birthday Party with his friends is this Friday, so he will get to celebrate twice!